


an unkindness

by Morcai



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Dark, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Raven Neil Josten, Suicide, gratuitous common raven facts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 18:31:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8457550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morcai/pseuds/Morcai
Summary: the life cycle of ravens.
   
      Nathaniel Wesninski becomes a Raven at eleven years old, numb and grieving, with his mother’s blood still drying under his nails. His thoughts are an endless loop of why did she do that? and he doesn’t protest when his father gives him to Tetsuji Moriyama and leaves without looking back.





	

**Author's Note:**

> dark, dark, dark, dark as hell pls forgive me.
> 
> translations display as hovertext!

**i. hatchling**

_... between three and seven pale bluish-green, brown-blotched eggs._

Nathaniel Wesninski becomes a Raven at eleven years old, numb and grieving, with his mother’s blood still drying under his nails. His thoughts are an endless loop of _why did she do that?_ and he doesn’t protest when his father gives him to Tetsuji Moriyama and leaves without looking back.

He has seen a lot of executions in his life, but none of them will stick with him like seeing his mother’s body jerk as four bullets strike home between her shoulder blades. The image lingers behind his eyelids for months, but it will take almost eight years for the image to surface in his nightmares.

In the Nest, he throws himself into Exy, lets Riko write a careful three onto his cheek and lets Kevin fix it every time it fades.

He’s almost happy, being number three, because if he’s on the court he doesn’t have to think about his mother and the way a suppressor doesn’t do much against the sound of a gunshot. If the lessons hurt, if the master leaves him with bruises, if Riko makes him practice with the knives he never wanted to learn how to use, it’s not enough to make him want to leave.

And then the last member of their Perfect Court shows up, spitting mad and Nathaniel’s responsibility, and the bruises get worse, turn into broken fingers and broken arms, turn into Riko taking his knives and cutting him open, turn into Riko making him cut himself open, turn into Riko making him cut Jean open, and this is when Nathaniel realizes.

 _He is never going to be free_. That’s what the number on his face means. It’s not a tattoo. It’s a brand of ownership.

 

Still, it’s not just Nathaniel anymore, it’s Nathaniel-and-Jean, it’s studying french and precalc in the laundry room, the door locked behind them. It’s perfecting how to piss Kevin off without rousing Riko, it’s no longer being _alone_ in the Nest, when all of the other Ravens have their partners.

He can’t resent the leash around his neck, when it ties him to Jean as much as it does to Riko.

 

**ii. fledgling**

_Ravens are...vigorous at defending their young and are usually successful at driving off perceived threats._

Riko breaks Kevin’s hand, and Kevin runs.

Nathaniel lets his lip curl and lets himself think bitter thoughts, lets himself think, _you coward_ , lets himself think _, Riko’s temper never scared you before_ , lets himself think, _it’s different when it’s directed at you, isn’t it?_

He lets himself think these things, because it’s easier than letting himself think, _I want that_ , than letting himself think _I wish I was that brave_.

Over the next week, he and Jean break three fingers, suffer a concussion and a half, need about thirty stitches and are abruptly reminded why both of them hate water. Nathaniel’s wrists are ripped open, and both he and Jean are shying away from other Ravens, as subtly as they can, by the time Riko finally satisfies his temper.

They never miss a practice.

 

One night, Nathaniel rests his head against Jean’s shoulder, just for a moment, while fixing stitches. He needs to _breathe_ for a moment. Jean’s hand settles lightly at the small of his back, and this is all the peace Nathaniel has ever known.

“Nathaniel, ami, nous avons presque fini. Une minute,” Jean urges, after several quiet, shaky breaths. Nathaniel bites his cheek, draws himself back together, finishes repairing Jean’s ripped stitches. He strips off his own shirt to check for anything he didn’t notice popping, or that should come out.

This is their life, after all. It hurts, but they’re still going to be the best. If Kevin can’t see that, then Nathaniel and Jean will just have to take over his place.

 

**iii. juvenile**

_Juvenile common ravens are among the most playful of bird species._

Nathaniel loves Exy like a shipwreck survivor loves the spar of wood he clings to: with absolute, single-minded adoration and the simultaneous urge to let go and have the whole ordeal be over with.

He doesn’t know what Jean thinks of Exy, He thinks about asking sometimes, and then he looks at bruises and splinted fingers and stitched flesh, and Jean taking care with his schoolwork, and he swallows the question.

Instead he sharpens his knives (because Riko will make him use them) and does his own work (because if he falls behind in his classes, the master will kill him).

 

Nathaniel doesn’t know how long it’s been since the first time he and Jean had to deal with a failed Raven, when he catches Jean watching his knives.

Nathaniel understands that. He watches his own knives like that, but he doesn’t like thinking about letting Riko and the master win. Still, sometimes, he knows, it would be enough to just _stop_.

He doesn’t hide his knives.

 

“I know you and Riko have a deal,” he says, sketching defensive plays in the margins of his notes, “but, if you wanted, I could...”

He lets the sentence trail off, because he can’t quite believe that Riko won’t hear, that this won’t be the thing that finally snaps Riko’s limited patience with him. Jean will understand anyway. They’ve barely been apart for six hours in the years since Riko told Nathaniel, _This is Jean. He’s your responsibility now_.

Jean stiffens against his back, fingers stilling on the keys of his laptop. Nathaniel doesn’t look over, because this is an offer he doesn’t want to have to make, and he doesn’t want to know what expression it puts onto Jean’s face.

“Merci, Nathaniel,” Jean says, after a long pause.

That’s all that needs to be said.

 

**iv. adult**

_[A]dults...are very rarely predated…_

It takes several months before Jean brings back up the half-conversation again. Nathaniel is maintaining his knives--honing them carefully, cleaning and oiling the blades. It would be meditative, except for the way that Nathaniel knows that he does it in the same way his father does.

“Nathaniel,” Jean says from across the room, where he should be doing math homework.

He looks up at his partner, and Jean’s dark eyes flicker from Nathaniel’s face to the knife in his hands, and then back up.

Everything goes cold, and Nathaniel swallows, before he puts the knife in his hands down on the desk. He offered. He has to follow through.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Do you want me to help?”

Jean nods, slowly, and slides off of his bed. Nathaniel waits, and Jean sits down by Nathaniel’s feet.

The knives on his desk are dark, wicked things, and all of them are heavy with the weight of screaming. Nathaniel swallows again, picks up the sharpest, and hands it to Jean, before lifting Jean’s other hand.

“Here,” he says, tracing a steady line from Jean’s wrist to his elbow. “Right arm first. Your dominant hand can compensate better.”

The skin under Nathaniel’s fingers is smooth, unmarred by the scars that he knows start farther up. Riko tries not to hurt them where it could show.

Jean takes a deep breath, and sets the knife to his arm. Nathaniel smooths his hair, and murmurs to him in French, and helps him with the other, when his hands are blood-slippery and shaking with pain.

(He wonders if the partners of the other failed Ravens did this, coaxed the dying through it, murmured endearments as the blood ran or the noose tightened or pill after pill was chased with alcohol. He doesn’t think so. The Nest does not encourage such sentimentality.)

 

Afterwards, when there’s enough blood on the floor that not even the paramedics could save him, Nathaniel pets Jean’s hair one last time, picks up his phone, and locks himself out of the room.

The show he puts on, as he calls the Master, should win him some kind of award. And when Tetsuji comes, when there’s a chance to bargain, Nathaniel wraps himself in his father’s fury and his mother’s audacity, and asks for a meeting with the Lord.

He gets it, in a way that no other member of the Perfect Court could.

Riko is a despised second son, and Kevin belongs to Riko and the Master. Kengo would never see them. Jean was feeble repayment for a debt, a chance and a business transaction. Nathaniel, though, was a transaction of a different kind--blood and loyalty, written out in the act of Nathan Wesninski giving up his son. His name has some weight, and he intends to use it ruthlessly.

When the time comes, he lifts his chin, and gets ready to tell the most dangerous story he knows to the people who terrify him most in the world.

 

Nathaniel Wesninski leaves Evermore with Jean Moreau’s blood wet under his fingernails and drying on his knives, and cannot shake the question of _was this worth it?_  

He doesn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> hi, sorry, come yell at me over on [tumblr](http://nathanielwsninski.tumblr.com).


End file.
